By Steve Rizer
Will the newly updated ConsensusDocs 752 Federal Subcontract Agreement make it significantly easier for general contractors and subcontractors to perform federal work? David Mendes, a spokesperson for the American Subcontractors Association (ASA), believes so.
“One of the most important challenges that subcontractors face on federal projects is compliance with the Federal Acquisition Regulations [FAR] and agency-specific supplements to the FAR,” Mendes told ConstructionPro Week (CPW). “In addition to substantive updates to contract language, the revised ConsensusDocs 752 contains an extremely valuable reference table that clearly explains the subcontract’s citations to the FAR that indeed will make it easier for subcontractors to understand and manage their obligations and perform their work according to the federal government’s and their general contractors’ exacting requirements.”
Mendes added that “ConsensusDocs 752 is the only up-to-date, well-thought-out standard subcontract for federal construction on the market, and ASA sees this form as gaining greater ‘market share’ because of that. Changes such as an exhibit with a list of flow-down clauses make the 752 more user-friendly, and so more general contractors and subcontractors are likely to use it.”
Tom Kelleher, chairperson of the working group that revised the standard subcontract, argued that the document will be “especially helpful to general and specialty contractors that may not routinely perform federal government contracts but now seek federal work in a construction market that has significantly changed since 2008.”
